I’ve mentioned before that I am a Disneyphile. My sister and I grew up with the Disney channel and constant rerecordings of the animated classics in our home, usually with The Lion King or The Little Mermaid on repeat. For my generation however, in addition to the classics that continue to remain in my video closet, we also had the Disney afternoon.

The Disney afternoon was a 2-hour block of cartoons that started immediately at 3:00 right after school: The Gummi Bears, Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers (the result of an early adaptation of The Rescuers movie), Ducktales, Talespin, and Goof Troop, while later years added in shows like Gargoyles, Aladdin, and Timon & Pumbaa. These shows shaped my childhood until middle school when this block of cartoons ended and the Fox Kids block started with shows for older kids. Each of these shows became famous for their characters and some storyline or another, or for their respective video games. While Talespin and Rescue Rangers were beloved, the one show (and especially the video game) I couldn’t get enough of was Darkwing Duck.

He’s the terror that flaps in the night! He is the jailer that throws away the key! He is the neurosis that requires a five-hundred-dollar-an-hour shrink! He’s…. Batman?

I had very little knowledge of Batman at 7 years old, so Darkwing was nothing more than a superhero who was funny and fought crazy villains. As I grew up and discovered the 1960s Batman series, I started to see the connections, making the Ducktales parody even funnier. Darkwing Duck, a.k.a Drake Mallard, is a single adoptee father of a troubled 9-year old, Gosalyn. After Gosalyn’s grandfather was murdered by a mob boss, Darkwing (DW) took her in with the help of his sidekick Launchpad McQuack. While attempting to care for her, DW has the plethora of freak bad guys in St. Canard, including Bushroot, the Liquidator, Megavolt, and Negaduck, an exact copy of Darkwing from the Negaverse (Earth 3 anyone?).

Despite only having an original run of 91 episodes between September ’91 and December ’92, the show remained on the Disney afternoon until 1997 when it moved into cable syndication for a short period until it fell out of obscurity. Thankfully, as with all great modern TV shows cancelled before their time, it didn’t take long for a comic publisher to pick up the rights. In 2010 Boom Studios ran 19 issues of a new DW comic, which followed up from the original series, including Gosalyn’s takeover of the Gizmoduck suit. This series even crossed over with the ongoing Ducktales series at the time. While I never got to finish the series, this is one of my favorites if only for the Darkwing multiverse storyline, which allowed for a Fourth Doctor Darkwing and Green Arrow Darkwing.

While that series was short, a new series from Joe Books started several months ago, chronicling these adventures again, hopefully for a longer period of time. Given the more recent exposure of Batman through film and video games, the parody runs through the pages of these books as each villainous character is locked up in “St. Canard’s Maximum Security Penitentiary for the Criminally Crafty.”

With the new Ducktales revival coming to Disney XD, it is hopeful that a new generation may be able to watch Darkwing Duck as well. Despite my criticism on reboots and revivals in the past, I would be willing to watch each new episode of this, enjoying the jokes for adults as much as I missed them as a kid.

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